Humanizing Horatio
by roseriddle4444
Summary: Horatio needs to be brought back down to earth...by three females who are even bigger assholes than he is. Warning: violence, coarse language, and copious amounts of trisyllable words.
1. Prologue

_I'm sorry I took so long, trying to tie up a few loose ends and hopefully destroy the Mary-Sue in Pearl. The title is a repeated line in one of my favorite songs when I was an innocent child. And speaking of innocent children...  
_

_I started writing this series because my half-sister (let's call her "Rebecca") was a huge fan of crime shows. She was also bulimic and had a host of other health problems, physical and mental. I cast her as the main hero (and me as the childishly innocent, cheerfully optimistic friend) because that's what we wanted to be. But eventually, I grew up and she died from cardiac arrest. But I could keep her alive in these stories, even though Pearl has become who I currently am and Varda more who I see my past self as. So, if you don't mind me idealizing the parts of Pearl that belong to Becca and base her personality off myself, we should get along fine. Sorry for rambling so much._

_Without further self-pity, CSI: Miami, anyone? _

* * *

Prologue: Miracles Happen

"How long does it take to get to Miami?" Pearl asked only minutes after the jet took off from Silver Springs and the Mimosa Mansion where she lived.

"About three and a half hours, I think. I wish we decided to leave on a different day. I'm gonna miss 'Grey's Anatomy,'" Varda said, adding a wistful note at the end.

"Don't worry. They'll show reruns during the summer, and you can always read the recaps," Pearl said, patting Varda's back.

"It's not the same," Varda said mournfully. Pearl glared at Callia before she could make a disdainful sound. But Callia actually looked sympathetic.

Pearl turned away, upset that her no-longer-dead adoptive sister-turned adoptive mother favored the girl whose own parents hadn't even noticed their daughter was not from India, but China, over her.

"So, who hired you?" Varda asked Callia, because she cared and she could.

"The Crime Scene Unit. I am now joining the likes of John Walden," Callia smiled at Pearl, expecting at least a nostalgic one in return.

But Pearl was too lost in her own memories to really think about Callia's. John Walden was a name she hadn't thought about since the day he arrested her parents for abusing her. Before that, he had been badly injured in New York and was sent to the same hospital that treated Pearl for shock after she heard that both her parents had been killed in the September 11th World Trade Center attacks. He had called her disowned sister Calanthe and convinced her to take Pearl back. He had care of her until Callie could take her back to Indiana. He had been a very good father, but Pearl didn't appreciate it in her grief. He had been the one who had told her Callie had died in a violent car crash.

But he had not been the one to tell her that her sister hadn't died. Nor, for that matter, had her schizophrenic mother. But few people would have been able to tell her, seeing as they would have to be a little bit…beyond human in order to know. And sometimes Pearl didn't want to think about how miraculous her life had become.

Callia's sniff brought her back into the real world. Well, as real as it could get when two Elementals were in the house. Well, this wasn't a house either.

Pearl clutched her head and screamed. Ever since she had sucked the universe out of Varda's head by accident, the two girls had been mentally linked so closely that hardly a day goes

By the end of the hour, Varda and Callia were asleep. Pearl, unfortunately, was too high on sugar to do much than hop around the plane, taking in the sights of and the sounds of the plane and ground her. So it's not much of a surprise that Pearl noticed when her black gloves where sucked right off her hands. It was dark, so she couldn't see much, but she was sure she wasn't supposed to hear a sound so loud that it was no longer sound, but a part of her. Then the shaking woke the others.

"We're gonna die!" Varda shrieked.

"No, we're not," Pearl looked at Varda like she was insane. "Are you crazy?"

"Are you?" Varda couldn't help but shoot back. Then the shaking got so intense that her vision started to blur. The plane grew increasingly erratic. In the middle of the chaos, nobody noticed Varda simply Starlel away. But everyone was very aware of the ground coming toward them far too fast for anyone's liking. Pearl's black gloves were sucked right off her hand. And then, darkness and silence came at the end of the cave she only just realized she was falling through.

* * *

"Hello, I'm Varda Swan. I was due here for a job interview in Animal Cops Miami," Varda strolled in as calm as anything. She glanced at the local paper. The jet crash was all over the front cover. Her palm flew to her face, smacking her, before she even realized she had poked herself in the eye instead of covering her mouth. "Oh my goodness! OW!"

"What?" the receptionist, luckily, hadn't seen the graceful dance, or most likely she would've turned Varda down then and there. Instead, the woman followed Varda's eyes to the paper. "Oh, yes, I heard about that. Terrible thing, but three people lived."

Varda already read through the list of the dead. She breathed a sigh of relief that she didn't recognize any of them. "I almost took this flight," she said.

"Really?" now the receptionist was looking at her interestedly.

Varda sighed and put the paper down. "Miss, about my job-"

"How much experience do you have with animals?"

"Plenty. I know much more than the average dog-and-cat owner."

"Good, you're hired. We've been so short on people lately," the receptionist filled out a form, picked up her phone, and dialed a number. "Wolfe, I've found you a partner. Yes, I'll see you soon," the woman hung up and leaned toward Varda with a smile. "I'm Kendall Novak." Varda was about to take the offered hand when Kendall shrieked, "There's a lizard on my desk!"

"Ms. Novak, have you considered that, with your hate of the entire animal kingdom, being an animal cop isn't your true vocation?" a man drawled from the doorway.

"What would you suggest I do?" Kendall stood so that she looked like she was offering her breasts to potential clients.

"Well, you're always on top of things, so I would say that you should join the CSI team. I hear they need new people up in New York. I know you hate the heat," the man leaned closer during the last sentence as if sharing a private joke.

Kendall laughed. "Ryan, you're so funny!"

Varda looked between the two of them and walked to the waiting room. This would take a while.

* * *

While Varda was feeling the pinch of the worsening economy, Eric Delko and Horatio Caine were zipping across swampy marshland at approximately three thousand miles an hour. At the very least, that's how fast their hearts were going.

"Flight 906, outbound Miami to D.C., dropped off the radar at 0-8-20," said Eric. "Crashed right after takeoff."

"How many were onboard?" Horatio asked.

Eric repeated the question into his cell phone, which meant a few more seconds waiting for the people on the other end to give him the answer. "NTSB confirms two pilots, six passengers, all from Indiana."

Horatio did a double-take at the word "Indiana," but he shook it off his initial shock quickly and simply said, "Eight souls unaccounted for, okay." He moved forward when the boat stopped before the still-flaming pile of twisted metal. Evidently, he hadn't shaken off his shock as well as he had believed.

Eric tried to stop him. "Look, they're advising we wait for fire—"

Horatio held up his hand and, without a single glance at him, spoke with uncharacteristic sharpness. "Look, we were four miles away when we took the call. First responders provide aid, no questions asked!"

Feeling miffed but nonetheless not willing to appear insubordinate, Eric repeated Horatio's message into the phone. "We're taking this." Well, sort of. Regardless of how well he did or didn't relay Horatio's intention through the phone line, Eric was surprised at the tenderness with which his boss carried a girl out of the water. Looking at her too-pale body, impaled through the waist and neck by a piece of metal, he couldn't help but say, "H, she's too pale. She's dead." But then he could make out the rise and fall of her chest. It was fast, panicky, and irregular. And her eyes were open. She was still conscious.

"Hel—" her voice was husky, most likely due to all the salt water she had swallowed.

Suddenly, a body was flung atop the crash, landing directly on the blonde girl's body. Her mouth opened to a fountain of foaming blood and water. Horatio almost flipped the dead man's body off, but seeing a willowy woman climb up and reach for the brunette gave him pause. The redhead stared at the woman until Eric said, "H, it's the woman we hired."

"I know," Horatio said tonelessly. "How did you survive unscathed when everyone else died?" he asked her.

* * *

**_Dear Pearl's Diary,_**

**_I 'm on my way to Miami now, where Callia just got a job because Judge Ratner put in a good word for us. I'll have to remember to thank him later._**

**_Well, takeoff, as you can imagine, was rather nerve-wracking. Pearl might be able to handle a plane takeoff easily, but I'm absolutely terrified of heights. Even if I'm only as high as a bridge, if there's a crevice anywhere, I imagine that I'm very, very small, and I fall through. I don't know why I torture myself like that. I just do. Luckily, it helps me to put my thoughts down on paper. I must thank Pearl for letting me use her diary. What did she call you, Magenta? Well, then I must also call you "Magenta," mustn't I?_**

**_Pearl__ wants you back now. I hope she's worked on her handwriting, because I simply cannot read anything she's written!_**

_Dear Magenta,_

_What does Varda know about good handwriting? Her handwriting is more atrocious than mine! And I'm writing very carefully, so she can read my insults to her. I'll stop now. Anyway, Varda and I have both just gotten jobs as Animal Cops in Miami. I 'm not afraid of any animals, so it's gonna be a good job for me. I'll wrestle an alligator to the ground if I have to!_

_The only thing that strikes me as wrong about this whole trip is the feeling that I've **been** here before! Also, I keep calling Walden, but he won't ever call back. I wonder why._

Horatio put the diary back in the evidence bag and put his head in his hands. "You have been here before, everything you said would come true has come true, and the reason John Walden won't answer your calls is because he's only an alias I used!"

* * *

_There won't be a lot on the case; I rarely write about crimes that don't involve children. __To answer some questions you may have, yes, Pearl **has** seen Horatio before. I jumped on his "John Walden" background. Pearl was abused as a child, and he was the one she called for help. They met in New York after her parents "died" in September 11th. And if you think I'm being insensitive to the thousands of innocent lives lost on that day, well, the tragedy claimed someone I was extremely close to. I'm not going to apologize for taking my pain out on my characters._

_Okay, enough sadness for one day. Here's a funny quote from the first chapter:_

Pearl hated wearing her hospital gown on the beach. She supposed she should be grateful that she was strong enough to go out again. But there was a part of her body left very vulnerable to the sea breeze. Just flap, flap, flapping in the breeze—the hospital gown, not the body part.

_I don't take the quote from Ellen Degeneres out of anything other than reverance, since she's the most amazing (and funny) person I know._

_I'm going to shut up before somebody slaps my mouth._


	2. Thank You

"_Thank You" is a song by Dido that really inspired me. The first time I heard it, I had just come home from Disneyland. The year before that, my boyfriend and I had gone to Disneyland together. The best way to describe that boyfriend would be "violent psychotic," so going back to Disneyland brought back a lot of memories, and I started to cry. A redheaded friend of mine, Ryan, comforted me and turned it from the worst day of my life into the best._

_This story is dedicated to him. Thank you, for real._

_

* * *

_

Chapter I: Thank You

Half an hour later, Kendall walked into the waiting room with a measuring tape in one hand and another form in the other. "I need to measure you for your uniform, and I need your emergency contact information."

"Should be fun," Varda took the form and put it on the desk so that when Kendall tried to measure her leg, Varda's hands were free to take the tape from her. "I know how to do things myself, Ms. Novak."

"Alright then," Kendall took her leather purse and walked out.

"She has a purse made out of cow skin when she works at Animal Cops. How do you date her?" Varda demanded.

"You wanna know the truth," Ryan suddenly became bashful. "I don't. Anyway, are you my new partner?"

"Yes. I'm Varda Swan and it's very nice to meet you," this time, Varda managed to complete her handshake. When it turned out to only be four seconds in length, she looked at the man sideways. "Ryan Wolfe, you have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, don't you?"

"What?" Ryan leaned closer for four seconds, and then leaned away.

"People with OCD have patterns in what they do, and the most common pattern is a pattern of four," Varda smiled. "I work as a psychologist part time."

"Doesn't psychologist pay more than cop?" Ryan asked.

"I love animals. I think it's disgusting, the way they're treated sometimes, as if they didn't have feelings," Varda's voice finally changed from the polite monotone she gave Kendall .

"Then we should get along fine," Ryan said firmly.

* * *

Pearl hated wearing her hospital gown on the beach. She supposed she should be grateful that she could go out again. But there was a part of her body left very vulnerable to the sea breeze. Just flap, flap, flapping in the breeze—the hospital gown, not the body part. At least the salt air cleared some of the demons in her head.

"It makes no sense, does it?"

"Excuse me?" Strangers didn't speak out of the blue, no matter what the fairy tales say, and not males, especially.

"The benches are backward. They go into all this trouble to build a city beside the ocean and nail the benches away from it?" the man could be a TV newscaster or a politician. He was clean-cut and had that tenacious look in his eye. His thick red hair was neatly combed and shining in the last of the afternoon sun. His suit and tie (in this weather?) called attention without being flashy. There was something about the cut of material that seemed rich, but when the man reached inside for his wallet, he frowned at how little there was. Still, he went to the vendor and came back with a Coke and vanilla ice cream. He smiled as he gave them to her, and she smiled back because he reminded her of her father. It's not that they looked alike, but they looked at her the same way. Like they were genuinely interested in what she had to say.

"Thank you," she said graciously.

The man's smile grew wider. "That's a voice I haven't heard in a while."

"True, Walden, true."

His smile disappeared. "Don't call me that," he said quietly.

"You haven't called, you haven't written, you haven't even visited me in the hospital yet!" Pearl hissed. "And you certainly haven't the right to tell me what to do!"

"I'm sorry," the man said sadly, drawing back. His eyes held some sort of hope.

"Who are you?" she asked. "If you aren't Walden, who **are** you?"

"I'm Horatio Caine. John Walden was an alias while I was undercover."

Pearl sighed and shoved her desserts aside. "Undercover for what?" she crossed her arms in front of her chest with her contrary tone.

"I'm afraid I can't tell you."

"Because then you'll have to kill me, right?" Pearl picked up the sundae.

"No, because someone else will," Horatio said with an intensity that made her stop trying to antagonize him.

"How's Callia?" Pearl patted the side of the bench next to her for him to sit on.

"She'll be alright. I trust she's competent?"

"Mercilessly driven to do good," Pearl looked haunted for a moment, thinking of how haunted Callia must be from all that she's seen and endured. Why had she not thought of how much Callia had suffered up to now? Then again, Callia was tough enough to keep sweet-toothed Pearl from her junk food. Speaking of which, Pearl picked up the ice cream and ate ravenously.

"Hungry?" Horatio smiled.

"No. I just haven't had unhealthy, sugary, icy-cold, bad-for-you stuff for a while," Pearl licked the spoon.

Horatio laughed.

Pearl tossed the empty sundae cup into the trash. "Spit it out," she said offhandedly.

"What?" Horatio sounded cautious.

"You came here to interrogate me about the plane crash; you want to know what I know. So ask. I'll tell," she looked at him, waiting.

"What happened before you landed?" Horatio asked. "Before the plane crashed?"

"Um, there was a lot of shaking," Pearl squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember. She heard somewhere that if she pictured how it smelled, then how it sounded, it was easier to pretend she was actually there.

"Okay, can you remember anything before the shaking?" Horatio leaned forward, elbows on his knees, looking sideways at her.

"Um," Pearl swallowed. She shook her head, abandoning the sound part of the plan. "I-" she gave an odd choked gasp.

"It's alright," Horatio said suddenly, moving as if to leave.

"No, it's not," Pearl said. "Callia's hurt and I can't help," she moved to brush some hair away from her face. Horatio instinctively moved to help her. Pearl stiffened, but not because of Horatio. "I remember…a woman screaming."

"Alright. Can you remember what was going on while you heard the woman scream? Was there a gunshot, perhaps?"

"The door was open," Pearl said. "I remember because my gloves were sucked right off my hands," she extended her annoyingly tiny hands. "But there was no gunshot."

"Good, very good," Horatio nodded. He stood up. "I think that's all I'll need for now, thank you," he said, looking down at her.

"And thank you. This has been a terrible day. You kept it from being the worst day of my life. Just one thing," Pearl piped up, unable to contain her curiosity. "How's Megan Donner? Her husband died. Is she okay to go back to work so soon?"

"How'd you know her husband died, Belle?" Horatio sounded actually frightened now. He had no control over the situation or how it might end.

"Belle?" Pearl raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, well if you don't know about it yet, don't worry," Horatio nearly ran away, leaving a very confused Pearl on the bench.

"Winnie," Jaunie Kim called, running over. "You're an idiot! You shouldn't be up and around!"

"Well, I couldn't sit down and stay there either," Pearl grumbled.

Jaunie scowled. "Well, you have to have another x-ray to make sure that hairline fracture on your skull is gone."

"X-ray away," Pearl smiled, getting up and putting a hand to her temple. She felt her blood pumping extra hard in that area, and she was worried. But she wasn't worried enough to tell Jaunie.

* * *

"What do you have there?" Varda asked.

"Two swans were killed," Pearl sounded sad as she stared at the swans. "I didn't find any traces of poison, but the necks were snapped. They at least died fast."

"Good," Varda's smiled in relief. "Who did it?"

"Judging by the shape and pattern of the bruises left on the sides of the swans' necks, I think we're looking for this guy," Pearl said, showing a picture of a guy whom she knew had done it.

"Did you do a necropsy?" Ryan asked as he entered.

"No," Pearl said carelessly.

"Did you actually check to make sure it was strangulation?"

"Nope," Pearl looked at him indolently.

"Are there any bruises?"

"Not that I know of," Pearl looked at Varda and they both fell into giggles.

"So you did nothing except glance over them," Ryan said, folding his arms together, not appreciating the fact that he didn't understand the joke.

Pearl assessed him. "I'm sorry, boss. I'll give you some reasons that," she leaned into the computer, "Terry Kirk should be arrested. Like the fact that the swans and the ropes that killed them were both on his property."

"Now I'm with you." Ryan went out to arrest the man.

Pearl giggled. Varda sighed.

"Someday, my little psychic, you'll make a mistake," Varda warned. "Trust yourself, not the machine. Haven't you ever read 1964?"

"Well, I'm not a machine, but yes, I have read it, and I hated it. I cried for hours, and not in a good way," Pearl shuddered. "The book scared me more than R.L. Stein could ever hope to."

"Then I believe Eric Blair has truly done his job," Varda smirked. "I should write him a letter of commendation." She imitated writing in midair, "Dear Mr. Blair, my friend thinks your book was the scariest thing she ever read, even worse than horror novels."

Pearl slapped Varda's hand away and they kept chick-fighting until Pearl 's phone rang. " Pizza Palace , may I take your order?" Pearl answered.

"Ha, ha, ha," Callia chuckle dryly. "Can you come over? It seems to be 'Take Your Annoying Family Member to Work Day,'" she said sarcastically. "And I need a good psychic. This whole bomb business makes me nervous."

Pearl laughed, "Be right there!"

* * *

"So what's happening?" Pearl hopped off Varda's silver Rolls Royce and into the lab. She paused. "Hey, is that coffee I smell?"

Horatio was shaking his head at her frantically.

"Yeah. It's Café Cubano," Eric said. "It'll put the hair on your chest."

Pearl took one sip and nearly gagged. "It'll put the hair on your **liver**!"

Calleigh entered, smiling perkily. "Don't you just say the sweetest things?" Pearl was gagging and spitting for the next ten minutes.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," Horatio laughed.

Pearl flashed him a dirty look. "You **didn't** warn me."

"Can you stop getting attention for five seconds and look at the news?" Callia snapped.

Pearl put the mug meekly on the table, careful not make a sound, and focused her attention to the news report as if her life depended on it. Horatio frowned.

"Is the bomb threat serious?" Eric asked.

"Change the channel," Horatio didn't take his eyes off the stock-still Pearl .

Every channel seemed to be covering the same story. Callia snorted. "Don't news crews usually hang around police stations waiting to report instead of the police hearing it from the news?" she was indignant.

"Can I help?" Pearl looked at the sour-faced Callia.

Horatio tensed, ready to step between the irresponsible Pearl and the irrepressible Callia if it came to blows. But, to his surprise, Callia laughed.

"Of course you can help!" Callia took Pearl 's arm and they walked out with the rest of the team. Horatio found himself in the back and last, to his chagrin.

* * *

"I didn't know they made Kevlar in triple-extra-large," were the first things Pearl heard Horatio say when she hopped off Callia's car.

"They make jockeys that size too, but you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" the guy who clearly knew Horatio laughed. They embraced, if you could call attempting to shatter each other's spines an embrace.

"I don't know how men don't get eviscerated when they hug like that," Pearl said dubiously as she watched Horatio and Al Humphries thump each other's backs.

" Pearl , just because you are as delicate as a butterfly doesn't mean everyone is," Callia said snidely. Pearl rolled her eyes.

"Horatio Caine, back from the dead. Found any good fiber recently?"

"Just enough to keep me regular," Horatio grinned at Humphries. He turned to the crime scene. "What do we have here?"

"Well, we have a Schedule-80 PVC collar clamped around the victim's neck," Pearl said. "And, if I'm not mistaken, Mr. Humphries here is going in to 'John Wayne' it."

"That I am, and call me Al," said Al.

"That's not the way you taught us, big man," Horatio said, mildly alarmed.

"I've got no choice," Al said. "Disarming the bomb remotely isn't an option."

"Well, Al, you have the best hands in the business," Horatio smiled.

"We'll have fun seeing those hands fly by us at a thousand miles per hour in a few minutes," Pearl said under her breath. Callia looked at her, alarmed. They watched Al pick up his case and turn back to Horatio, pitying expressions on their faces. "Look, I've got to go do this thing, but let's grab a beer later. Catch up," said Al.

"So long, Al," Pearl said, now beside Horatio. Horatio frowned at her. Pearl looked up at him with her sparkling, vivid blue-green eyes showing that she knew too much for her age. Those haunted (or maybe he was looking for the word haunting) eyes stared at him as he took the x-ray of the bomb and looked over it. She removed her eyes from him for a single moment to watch a chirping bird, and then the windows were blown out. She screamed and covered her face. Callia ran for cover. Horatio wanted to run and protect Pearl. All he actually did was put his hand to his ear. It came out bloody.

"No," he mouthed.

* * *

_I'm going to hope that isn't going to go after me for the copious amount of funny material I just couldn't help but steal. I use only the feeble excuse that I'm not making money off of this, so please don't sue me, and if you still don't like it, I'll take it down, no questions asked, alright? -hides-_

_This wasn't a very cheerful chapter, was it? (Not to mention after I wrote it, I told my friend that I killed someone with a bomb-Humphries-and she looked at me like I was crazy). Well, here's something to cheer you up with:_

Pearl's mouth opened in a silent protest, but she just shook her head and swiped a ham sandwich off Horatio's desk. She didn't have to put herself in danger. She just had to keep him from doing anything stupid.

Which, judging from the looks of it, was a full-time job.


End file.
